Drama Between Budapest and Vienna The Final Battles of the 6. Panzer Armee in the East, 1945

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This 2004 hardbound volume features an illustrated color cover, glossy pages, and spans over 475 pages, including nearly 1,000 footnotes, 16 pages of photos, 124 appendices, and a separate 32-page full-color map book. Authored by Georg Maier, the former Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations of the 6. (SS)-Panzer-Armee, it presents a comprehensive history of his former field army and the lesser-known battles on the southern Eastern Front during the war's final months. Maier employs primary source documents, war diaries, and insights from surviving senior commanders to provide an objective account of operations, countering distorted post-war memoirs. The narrative covers four Waffen-SS corps and notable divisions, including the 1. SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and the 2. SS-Panzer-Division Das Reich, among others. It also includes famous Army armored divisions such as the 1. Panzer-Division and the 3. Panzer-Division. The book begins with the desperate attempts to relieve Budapest and the IX. SS-Gebirgs-Korps, followed by the ill-fated Lake Balaton offensive, where the 6. Panzer-Armee faced severe challenges against Soviet defenses in unsuitable terrain. Maier meticulously chronicles the fighting through to the end in Vienna.